Search This Blog

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Now that a federal biosafety and bioethics committee has approved
what would be the first use of the trailblazing genome-editing
technology CRISPR-Cas9 in people, the obvious question arises: Could
anything go wrong?

The purpose of such a Phase 1 clinical trial is to assess safety, so
problems wouldn’t come as a total shock. The fact that the trial in
cancer patients (which still needs OKs from the Food and Drug
Administration, among others) would be funded by the new cancer
institute founded this year by tech mogul Sean Parker adds a wild card. Four potential snafus:....